Right-click 'Find in Dictionary' shows only part of entry

Question

Right-click ‘Find in Dictionary’ shows only part of the entry in FLEx. This is what Paratext brings up:

and this is what’s in FLEx:

I’d like more than the ‘etymology’ information to show in Paratext. And I’d like the spacing to show in Paratext as it shows in FLEx. How do I do that?

Thanks.

Edit: I just found that some entries actually do display nicely:

So now I need to figure out why…

Answer 1

Unfortunately the Find in Dictionary feature in PT8 (and beta versions of 7.6) actually “dumbed down” the capabilities of the Find in Dictionary feature in PT7. It used to display the FLEx entry just like it looked in the “preview” pane above the data entry area. THIS IS THE PREFERRED behavior (certainly by me anyway), because then the user can set up the preview in FLEx to look just right, and PT would show it that way. But apparently this is very tricky to do and maintain across programs. Also, the columns shown in PT8 Find in Dictionary (when there is not an exact match) are not user-definable, like they are in the same dialog in FLEx, so in the end, they are not very helpful (e.g. it shows a column called “Allomorphs” which is pointless in our language; whereas in FLEx we show the English and Indonesian definitions, and English and Indonesian reverse field columns–these are much more useful to us, with lots more information than the “gloss” field).

Bottom line: from what I have found, what is shown in the PT8 version of the Find in Dictionary window is an arbitrary and non-configurable subset of the fields. It needs to be upgraded, and it is in the “To Do” List somewhere. But many feel it’s a cosmetic request and not functionally worth the extra coding involved.
(Personally, I would rather PT8 simply call FLEx in an independent window, hand off the string, and made FLEx do the work and display the information. Then we could keep working in PT8, and the FLEx look up window would simply stay there until we sent it another string. Maybe this way PT8 wouldn’t have to maintain a lot of duplicate code either.)

Comments

davidc78:

Personally, I would rather PT8 simply call FLEx in an independent window, hand off the string, and made FLEx do the work and display the information. Then we could keep working in PT8, and the FLEx look up window would simply stay there until we sent it another string. Maybe this way PT8 wouldn’t have to maintain a lot of duplicate code either.

Ironically, this is very similar to how it used to work in PT 7.5 - Paratext just called to FLEx to have it show the dialog. However, it was redesigned to directly access the data-layer of FLEx instead (for speed reasons, mostly) - which means that the UI had to be re-created inside Paratext.

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Unfortunately, the UI was not “re-created”, because it is lacking most of the capabilities and features of the UI as it works in FLEx. I never found speed to be a problem in PT7.5. I would MUCH prefer PT8 just return to handing off the target lookup string to FLEx, so the dialog and the popup view can be configured in FLEx to look like we need it to look. There is no way PT8 developers can spend the time needed to completely recreate the capabilities and configurability of FLEx’s view-code in its displays.

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davidc78:

There is no way PT8 developers can spend the time needed to completely recreate the capabilities and configurability of FLEx’s view-code in its displays.

All of this was done by the FLEx/FieldWorks team (changing to the new way of intercommunication and recreating the UI). You’d have to talk to them to know why they ultimately chose the current route.

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Ah, okay, thanks for that information, that is odd, isn’t it! I’ll ask them. Again thanks for clarifying this.

Answer 2

Which version of Paratext and which version of FLEx?

Comments

Oops, sorry: Paratext 7.5.100.87; FLEx 8.3.8.

Answer 3

Looks like curly braces {} in the entry that makes Paratext unhappy.

Comments

Hmmm… You might be right about the curly brackets (I just tested with a few other words). Bummer.

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Paul, what does the view in Paratext 8 look like of that word? When I test, it appears Paratext 8 never shows the etymology field from Flex, whether it has curly brackets or not. (You could do a quick test if you have Paratext 8 even if you have not migrated that project yet: create a test project with that word in the text somewhere, and link it to your Flex dictionary).

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Hi sewhite,

    I'm still on 7.5, so I can't tell you what it looks like in 8...
    Sorry,




    Paul

Answer 4

Actually, I’d like to know when we PT8 users will be getting such nice looking entries in the “Find in Dictionary” window. In my version of PT (since v7.6 and now v8.0.100), the “Find Dictionary” window is, well, lame. Here is what one entry looks like in PT8:

And here is what that same entry looks like in FLEx:

image.png773×220 24.3 KB

The difference is HUGE! And the “updated” version of “Find in Dictionary” is very disappointing. I’ve been asking for literally years for this to be fixed, and returned back to how it looked in 7.5 (where it used the current FLEx Dictionary View configuration to display in that window).

Is anyone else seeing this change in PT8, or is it just me?